In a myriad of applications, there is a need to identify the location of an object. One example of such an application is a hospital environment. One example of an object to be tracked in a hospital environment is a mobile hospital bed.
Some hospital beds are mounted on wheels. This enables the hospital bed to be transported from one location to another location. In some instances, the movement of the hospital bed from one location to another location occurs when the hospital bed is unoccupied. The unoccupied movement of a hospital bed could occur, for example, when the tasking of a given room in a hospital is permanently, or temporarily, revised. Later, perhaps much later, further movement of the unoccupied hospital bed may be desired. For example, upon the conclusion of a temporary re-tasking of several hospital rooms, it may be desired to return a large number of unoccupied hospital beds to their original locations.
However, absent an automated system for tracking the location of each and every hospital bed, the location of one or more unoccupied hospital bed(s) may have become unknown. For example, a human error in accurate record keeping could render the location of one or more unoccupied mobile hospital beds unknown. In another example, an unoccupied mobile hospital bed may have been further moved in the interim to provide facility access for an unrelated cleaning or maintenance operation, and not returned to its recorded location upon conclusion of the unrelated facility cleaning or maintenance.
In other instances, the movement of a hospital bed from one location to another location occurs when the hospital bed is occupied. The occupied movement of a hospital bed may occur, for example, in situations where it is medically undesirable to remove the patient from the bed. For example, an occupied mobile hospital bed may be moved from a patient's assigned room to a different room in the hospital to perform a surgical or other medical procedure. Later, upon improvement or other fundamental change in the status of the patient's condition, the patient might be further transported from one location in the hospital to another location in the hospital by wheelchair, leaving the hospital bed behind. In such instances, a system for knowing the location of the patient would be inadequate to know the location of the mobile hospital bed.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method to know the location of mobile hospital beds in real time. The foregoing example applies similarly in other applications. For example, it is well known that merchants and manufacturers have a need and corresponding desire to track the location of inventory that may be relocated from one location to another location within the facility of the merchant or manufacturer. It should be apparent that there are many other applications where there is a desire and benefit for a system and method for tracking the location of one or more objects.
One approach to implementing a system and method for tracking objects utilizes a location information collector, sometimes also called a reader (or collector, for short), to communicate location information upstream in the system through a physical wire or cable such as electrically conductive wire or fiber optic cable. Such a system could be implemented in a hospital, a warehouse or other manufacturing facility, or in a brick and mortar retail store. However, such systems are intrusive. A physically wired and/or cabled system for tracking objects requires the installation of physical wires and/or cables throughout the facility coverage area in order for the location information to be transmitted upstream from the collectors. This results in a considerable expense of materials and time consuming labor.
Further, there is a need and desire for a system and method of tracking the location of one or more objects in other applications where the installation of wiring and/or cabling upstream from the collectors or readers is not practical. For example, there is a need and desire for a system and method of tracking the location of workers at a construction site, including a construction site not yet sufficiently developed to have wiring and/or cabling installed.
In other examples, there is a need and a desire for a system and method of tracking the location of workers in greenhouses and other agricultural environments. In these and many other applications, the location of the object desired to be tracked is sufficiently remote from any necessary infrastructure, and/or sufficiently distributed, such as in an agricultural field of dozens or even hundreds of acres, that the hard wiring of wires or cables to transmit information upstream from the collectors in a location tracking system and method is not practical. In such sufficiently remote and/or distributed applications, a requirement of wires and/or cables to transmit information upstream from the collectors prevents the need and desire for a system to track the location of objects from being satisfied.
Even the provision of electrical wires as a source of power to operate the collectors in the system is impractical in some applications. An agricultural environment distributed over a large outdoor area is an example of once such an application. Another example is low level product location tracking in a large lumber yard.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system that tracks the location of one or more objects where the collectors in the system are not connected to any other component in the system by any wiring. In a corresponding manner, there is a need for a method of tracking the location of one or more objects where the collectors in the system not only receive signals from the tracked objects wirelessly, but also communicate with upstream components in the system only wirelessly.
Returning to the example of the hospital environment, wireless communication from the collectors to upstream components, such as access points, in an object tracking system and method, potentially present additional concerns. For example, in current hospital environments a lot of information unrelated to tracking the location of objects is also communicated wirelessly via an existing wireless hospital network. Thus, wireless communication from collectors to upstream components such as access points in an asset tracking system and method in a hospital that communicate by way of an existing wireless hospital network would reduce the available bandwidth for other communications in that network and would require involvement of IT professionals to coordinate the coexistence of these communications with other communications using that existing wireless hospital network. Thus, there is a need for an object tracking system and method that communications wirelessly from collectors to upstream components by way of a wireless network that is entirely separate and discrete from other wireless network communications that are operating in the same space.
For applications where even the provision of hard wired electrical power for operating the collectors is impractical, as discussed above, there is a need for a system and method for tracking the location of objects where the collectors are battery powered. It is well known that, in devices that are battery powered, the rate of power consumption is a concern. Accordingly, for systems and methods of tracking the location of objects utilizing battery powered collectors, there is a need that the collectors consume little power in order to stay operational over long periods of time.
The foregoing also applies to situations where the information transmitted through, and processed by, the system is information other than the location of an asset. For example, in various embodiments the information can exclusively, or additionally, include any one or combination of: a temperature reading from a temperature sensor, a meter reading from a meter such as a utility usage meter, an indication of the presence or absence of a condition such as a door being open or closed, a/the door being locked or unlocked, and/or presence or absence of a harmful gas, and so on. Other examples include where the object is a consumable dispenser such as a paper towel dispenser and/or a soap dispenser and the information transmitted from the object includes a usage event related to usage of the consumable dispensed by the dispenser. Examples of such usage events include an amount of the consumable dispensed, a time during which dispensing of the consumable occurred, and a time when the dispenser is opened and the consumable changed or replaced.